apostasy
the small white church sits
under a quiet sky
a sprinkling of stars dances
in the vaguely golden light
of the smiling moon
i look up and smile back
as i make my way home
wondering what it must be like
to turn one’s life out
into the hands of an invisible maybe
i cannot wait for pie in the sky
and all the words
of promise and comfort
spoken by an itinerant
recorded by unknown hands
and likely mistranslated
or worse yet manipulated
will not salve the wounds life deals
or erase the threats
of a vengeful father god
if god was love
the earth would truly be the garden
and not the bloody battleground it is
as i pass this place of worship
i admire the clean spare architecture
of rockribbed yankee craftsmen
and continue on my godless way
home to bed where i will not be saying
any prayers before retiring
amen
segue
it was a
warm september day
we stood side
by side with
drinks in hand admiring our
new garden blooming
in all the
symbols of our love
late roses
and early
asters nodded in the salt-
sea breeze softening
the coming
evening with their sweet
perfume as
we turned to
each other smiling in the
surety of all
we’d promised
then overwhelmed with
the desire
to taste the
nectar of your kisses i
leaned in close tilting
up my face
to find your lips but
as i took
your arm you
turned to sand and melted to
a memory with
hot coarse grains
of sorrow burning
my ankles
as i stood
not in a garden but a
flat sterile desert
with nothing
but the mocking voice
of the wind
and a terse
two sentence letter spelling
the end of my world
∞
RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (New York Times, February 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails (Brick Street Poetry, April 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019), Coffin Bell Two (March 2020), in print in 2River, Adelaide, Event, Genre Urban Arts, Gravitas, Kansas City Voices, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner and Southword among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals.
